Prizm Development, Inc. - Build a Spine Center of Excellence

Developing spine centers of excellence

Prizm Development, Inc. is an award-winning development company that works with physician groups and hospital systems that are interested in creating centers of excellence. Prizm Development, Inc. has helped physician groups and hospitals to improve the way care is provided. Specifically, Prizm helps medical providers improve their market position. Prizm improves the awareness for services among the local target audiences, including managed care companies, large employers, workers compensation referral sources and most of all, consumers. Prizm works with physician groups and hospitals to accomplish the following:

determine if the center of excellence will fill a need in the local market.
determine how competitors are perceived by referral sources.
develop win-win contractual alliances with managed care organizations and large employers by creating innovative case rates that package physician, diagnostic and facilities fees into surgical and nonsurgical global case rates.
develop database software systems that automate communication with large groups of referral sources, existing patients and desirable prospects.
use Prizm's proprietary binary-path clinical protocols that streamline care, reduce treatment variation and enable groups to download charge and ICD-9 data into a PC environment for quicker analysis of global rates.
promote the center as a regional referral center with communications that reach consumers,employer referral sources, managed care referral sources and physician referral sources.

Step 1: Market Assessment

Never assume you know the needs of the customer. We always meet with key market leaders so we can develop the spine center to meet the needs of the local and regional marketplace. Click here for more.

Step 2: Facility and Staffing

We assist with building the location and space planning, often setting up the clinic with a prominent internal rehab gym. Then we coordinate signage, etc. We also help recruit the necessary PMR and manual therapist staff. Click here for more.

Step 3: Corporate Identity & Strategic Planning

Prizm has won 20 national awards for excellence in healthcare marketing. We develop a short, memorable name that consumers will use rather than a long name that will be turned into an acronym. Then we develop a corporate identity package that signals "quality" to business and medical referral sources and especially consumers.

For more information on NAMING, click here.

Step 4: Quality systems that reduce variation

The definition of quality is the ability to reduce variation about the mean. For example, most spine practices have multiple form sets for medical histories. But asking questions different ways can lead providers down different and variable diagnostic paths to different conclusions. Prizm uses a standardized history form to unify data collection, diagnosis and physician/therapist collaboration. Prizm also collects patient severity data at intake, and audits return to function after care – which enables a spine center to differentiate itself from others, AND defend itself. Why? Because the top spine providers typically receive the most complex, failed back patients from across a region. These same centers, however,can be blamed unfairly for high treatment costs, as compared to others who treat simple acute back strain. Click here for more.

Step 5: Non-surgical protocols & case rates

Prizm's proprietary clinical protocols not only reduce treatment variation, but they enable a spine center to provide a set fee for non-surgical management of back pain covering a four-week episode of care. This is extremely attractive to payers who are increasingly annoyed with endless CPT charges. This system enables pricing by ICD (problem) vs. CPT (task) – the future of healthcare. Click here for more.

Step 6: Consumer help and triage

Ironically, physician practices typically put the least trained person at the front of the organization. We turn that model on its head. Instead, we have a spine specialized RN that educates the customer to all their options. And because our centers feature their top tier providers, the best choice of provider becomes that much more self-evident. Online protocols enable the RN to provide home remedies when applicable and triage the incoming patient to the PMR or surgeon. Click here for more.

Step 7: Packaging and promotion

If you are not the expert source for information on back pain, then who is? Prizm positions the spine center as the undisputed expert source for credible information in the field of spine. This is accomplished through a series of educational ads and an on-line encyclopedia on spine. Prizm has developed some of the most content-rich spine center sites on the Internet. The consumer ads educate the back pain sufferer to take responsibility for his or her own health, and to explore a non-surgical approach. Click here for more.

Step 8: Prospect management

Home Remedy Book

Prizm's Home Remedy Book provides a home exercise program that can relieve simple back pain. More importantly, to get the free book, the back pain sufferer provides a name and address that is logged into a back pain sufferers database. Over time, the spine center develops a valuable database of 50,000 back pain sufferers in its market.

Prizm provides the space planning and finish-out guidance, physician recruitment, and then promotes the new center with informative ads, marketing communications and entertaining Web sites that educate consumers about lowering their risk of a health problem or how to apply home remedies safely. These educated consumers then pull themselves to the high quality centers.

Need more information on back and neck pain?
Click here to view resource books on spine problems, what causes back pain, what causes neck pain and when to see the doctor.